


Good Old College Try

by disamphigory



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Darcy is the fandom bicycle and I love it, F/F, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 06:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3108704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disamphigory/pseuds/disamphigory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working my way through a set of College AU meet-cutes, combined with the soulmate identifying marks concept. Almost all of them will be Darcy/someone because who doesn't love Darcy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [write love on my skin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1835587) by [amusewithaview](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview). 
  * Inspired by [write love on my skin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1835587) by [amusewithaview](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview). 



> I love meet-cutes. These are what I write when I am trying to write another thing, but can't. They are not very edited but what the hell. I am always in the market for more Darcy soulmate fics, so I thought I'd fill in the gap.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> darcy lewis/clint barton
> 
> "I’m really passionate about this cause and I will give you this flier if I have to shove it down your throat"

"Eventually  _someone_  will take a flyer," Sam said with a sweet determination, and Darcy grinned through teeth gritted against the cold and tried not to shiver. The most visible and heavily-trafficked area of campus on saturday afternoons was at the intersection of several winding paths at the top of the hill that separated the quad from the academic buildings.

"Rally for Racial Justice!" Sam said, holding out a flier to a disinterested freshman (totally a freshman: there was a  _look_  they all had, Darcy would swear), who burrowed into their fluffy hat and shook their head while looking at the chalkings on the pathway.

"Well, fuck you too, buddy," Darcy groused after the student had walked past a safe distance, then winced. Everyone did, when you didn't know someone. Trying to say something distinctive so your words matched up with your potential---partner? soulmate? Darcy wasn't sure what the PC term was anymore--was difficult if you also swore like a dockworker, which was Darcy's natural setting. Although, judging by her words, her soulmate was probably a jackass, so maybe it didn't matter if she swore.

"Darcy, that's not really the spirit," Steve said, walking up behind them holding a tray full of coffee. Darcy shrugged and nabbed her mocha and curled her entire body around the warmth entering her fingertips with a heartfelt sigh.

"Next one, Steve. I'll get 'em." Darcy stepped closer to Steve, looking tentative. Steve looked at Sam, who nodded and grinned, and Steve opened his arms so Darcy could dart in and cling to Steve's side with one arm while holding her mocha with the other. "So  _warm_ ," she said into Steve's blue peacoat.

"Yeah try sleeping next to that heater," Sam said and Steve flipped him the bird in the gloves Darcy had knit him in a red and white stripe pattern.

"Oooh here comes one!" Darcy said, squinting at their next victim-- _fellow social justice advocate--_ came trudging up the lesser-used pathway from the athletic complex. He was wearing that advanced fabric that Darcy thought only astronauts and hardcore runners wore, and had a giant bag on his back with pristine gym shoes dangling from the strap.  _Jocks_ , Darcy thought with a moue of distaste on her face, and let Sam take the lead on this one.

"Rally for Racial Justice?" Sam said, casually holding out another flyer.

"Naw, thanks dude," Jock said absently and side-stepped around their huddled group. Darcy narrowed her eyes at his retreating backside.  _Hate to see you leave, love to watch you go_ , as it were, but honestly why couldn't  _someone_  take a damn flyer? It wasn't even like Ferguson was twitter-only anymore. This shit had been going on for  _months_.

"Give me that," she said, and took the flyer from Sam's outstretched hand. She hustled up behind the jock-bro and tapped him on the (very broad, she noticed) shoulder.

"Take it, or I'll make you eat it," she said, shoving the flyer at his chest.

He responded quickly, seemingly without thinking, "Look lady, I'm not into your little 'Save The Whales' campaign."

Darcy dropped the flyer and the wind caught it and blew it away towards the pond. Did he just actually say--

"Say that again."

Jock-bro looked confused and touched one of his ears in a quick, subconscious gesture. "Sorry, I just--Can't have any more paper--"

"No! Say what you just said to me. What you just said to me when we just met for the first time." Darcy demanded.

Jock-bro raised his hands, "Okay! Okay. I said, "Look lady, I'm not into your'---wait.  _Wait_. Wait what the  _fuck_."

Ah yes. Realization.

Darcy nodded slowly, looking into a squashed face with startling blue eyes that were fixed on her with intensity. "And I said, "Take it, or I'll--"

"--make you eat it," Jock-bro finished, and then to Darcy's surprise, started stripping in the middle of the pathway. He dropped the bag in the snow and started pulling off his purple hoodie and weird sports fabric shirt underneath. He turned around and reached over his shoulder to brace fingers around a familiar phrase in handwriting Darcy knew came from her years of loner-induced calligraphy hobby. She reached up with gloved fingers to brush it lightly, and Jock-bro shivered, most likely because he was half-naked in the cold.

"Oh my god put your clothes back on you freak!" She said, stepping back and taking the bundle of clothes from Jock-bro's hands and trying to put them on him.

"Not  _usually_  the reaction, babe," Jock-bro said, taking control of his shirt and hoodie and covering back up again.

"It's like four degrees out how are you not wearing a jacket." Darcy said in a rush.

"I just got back from the--you know what? Another time. Hi, I'm Clint and you're beautiful."

" _And_  your soulmate. Hi, Darcy. Darcy Lewis." Darcy held out a gloved hand, because that definitely in the correct order of introducing oneself to one's soulmate. You know, after the stripping down in the middle of winter.

"It is my greatest pleasure to meet you, Darcy. Darcy Lewis," Clint said, and took her hand in both of his. He then grinned, shyly, for someone of such  _jock-i-tude_. "Don't suppose you want to share where my handwriting might be?"

"Not in this weather."

His face fell, but he perked back up. "So....dinner?"

Darcy bit her lip and looked back up the hill at Sam and Steve, who were huddled into each other and gave her thumbs-up signs. Steve might have jumped a little bit. She supposed it was pretty obvious, even from a distance, what their first meeting had really been about. "Can't do dinner tonight--"

Clint's face fell further, and Darcy felt like she was taking salmon away from Grumpy Cat. Yes, that exact metaphor. Darcy had a good relationship with Grumpy Cat, in terms of sheer amount of time spent re-watching youtube clips.

"--But there is this really great rally going on...." she finished.

Clint perked up. "Save the whales? I'm into whale saving now?"

Darcy stepped in close, took his arm, and began herding him back up the path towards Steve and Sam. He smelled like sweat, which was not a turn-on, but he was also still giving off post-exercise heat, so she'd take it. She take  _him_.

"Something roughly as important," she said, because whales were people too, and that was something she and Clint would need to be clear on later, large water mammals and the non-existence of a post-racial America. "But  _after_ the rally--"

"--We will be really fucking cold because I'm betting this is an outside event?"

"Well, yes, but after the rally I can show you  _my_  mark, as well..." She gestured meaningfully to her chest area, and felt Clint stumble a little bit. She decided to attribute that to black ice.

"Well, pip pip hurrah for whatever we're going to," Clint replied, and she squeezed his arm and took a deep breath of sharp cold air.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy Lewis/Agent Victoria Hand
> 
> "I know I keep coming to the cookie shop but no judging."

On Wednesdays, the cookies were pink, and some weeks (every week), that was what got Darcy out of her nice, cool apartment and into the hot-garbage wet-penny smell of New York City in high summer. Pink cookies. Cookie Dude behind the counter had gauges and a lip piercing and always gave her an extra double-chocolate chip.

"If you're from Africa, why are you white?" Cookie Dude asked, taking her credit card and smirking. They traded lines every week. Darcy had started it by asking for ALL the cookies, and Cookie Dude had asked if there was a limit to "all" and, well.

"Apartheid," she responded, deadpan and Cookie Dude froze, before trying hold down a grin. 

Darcy met Cookie Dude's gaze before they both started laughing. He handed over her three cookie order plus an extra because Darcy was the bomb, but then she heard the sound of angry foot-tapping behind her. She turned her head and caught a glimpse of someone she really should only have seen  _inside_  her scary workplace of doom/SHIELD: one Agent Victoria Hand, six-feet of intimidating that made Darcy terrified and kinda turned on. They'd never  _spoken_ , but she was like Coulson, (RIP and not-RIP, xoxo New Mexico fun-times) only hotter because, well, _lady_. 

Caught up in once again cataloging Agent Hand's impressive stature, intimidating glare, and kick-ass low-lights, Darcy had neglected to move out of the way. The foot tapping got faster and more emphatic. Darcy side-stepped with a swing of her skirt and continued to stare, because her possession of cookies meant that the world was okay and that staring at Agent I-Once-Killed-A-Dude-With-Literally-My-Pinky-Nail wasn't going to get her shoved in a small cell in The Fridge.

Agent Hand stepped forward to the counter and brought her feet together in an easy shoulder-width apart and ordered a coffee (three sugars, black) to go. She slowly turned her head to Darcy, eyebrows cocked in a very clear "why are you still staring at me, you weirdo" expression.

Darcy panicked, and said the first thing that came to mind. "So, like," she leaned forward and squinted at Agent Hand's hair, "do you wear pink  _everyday_ , or just on Wednesdays?"

Darcy took a shuffle back as Agent Hand straightened up out of what passed for her slouch and suddenly focused  _all_  of her attention on Darcy. She tilted her head, pink low-lights sweeping forward over one shoulder, and smirked.

"Four for you, Glen Coco?" she gestured to the cookies in Darcy's hands.

"I need these to  _live_ , lady, and---wait."

Agent Hand moved one of her eyebrows and Darcy wished she could do the same, mono-eyebrow mover that she was.

"Wait wait wait. Are you---did you---uh."

Agent Hand's smirk got deeper and she stepped forward "I had to watch that movie eight times. Every time someone saw my soulmate mark, in fact." Cookie-dude behind the counter gasped dramatically. "I did not  _like_  that movie," Agent Hand, Darcy's soulmate, apparently, said. "This fact will come up a lot, I can assure you."

Darcy shrugged. "Whoops. So, like, we gonna talk, now? Only it's Wednesday and I have a lot of science to do and--"

Agent Hand reached out and held onto Darcy's fluttering hand. "We are talking, now. You, Ms Lewis, are probably not required by Doctor Foster--"  
"--You know who I  _am_?" Darcy interrupted.

"I know everything," Agent Hand assured her.

Darcy didn't doubt her. She held out her package of cookies. "The limit does not exist?" she asked, and Agent Hand took the package from her.

"Discussions of hard limits are possibly a fourth date conversation, Ms. Lewis, don't you think?" And smiled. 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> darcy lewis/pepper potts
> 
> "All our friends are drunk"

Jane was singing. Jane, Darcy should mention, was gifted in many things, but tone and pitch and overall expelling of air to make music was not one of her talents. But, she was singing.

Jane was singing, Thor had wandered off with a keg somewhere, and she was the only sober one here. Yay pain medications.

Wait, not the only one sober here. Darcy squinted in the half-light of the nearly empty bar, and adjusted her grip on Jane's plaid shirt. Jane stuck her fingers into Darcy's belt loops and hung on. There was a red-headed woman across the bar who was checking her phone, and Darcy tried to pick out her facial expression in the blue-glow that lit her face. Possibly sober. Possibly she wasn't  _alone_  with drunky mcphysicist and a pounding sing-a-long playlist in a shitty bar just to the west of campus. Well, only one way to find out.

"C'mon, Jane. Walksies," she said, which was in itself an irony because usually Jane was the one persuading her inebriated ass around a bar at 2AM.

They walked in a zig-zag pattern around the tall tables with no stools, avoided the remnants of a pong tournament, and almost made it to sane red-head when Jane was plucked from Darcy's arms.

"Stark!" Jane unlatched herself from Darcy's belt loops and opened her arms, a giant grin on her face.

"Foster!" A dude smelling like expensive cologne and a sporting kind of a creepy goatee ducked around Darcy's back and embraced her.

"You asshole! You stole my lab time!" Jane hugged him and poked him in the side with her mostly empty bottle of Sam Adams. 

"You love me for my brain, c'mon, Foster! Dance with me and maybe I'll give it back." Darcy gathered that Jane and possibly-Tony-Stark-Jane's-Lab-Nemesis-Who-Paid-For-Pizza were ok, and walked onwards towards the red-haired woman, who was also watching their interaction through narrowed eyes. Darcy gestured with her can of 7UP at the table with a questioning look and red-head nodded back, so Darcy hopped herself up on a tall swivel stool and turned back to watch Jane attempt to guide Tony into a deep dip, which they recovered from with the unknowing grace of the exceptionally plastered.

Darcy sipped her soda and subtly checked out Red-head, using her peripherals like her older brother taught her. Brothers: useful for tips about chicks, being vain about their cars, and squawking in masculine indignation whenever she brought up embarrassing stories in front of their girlfriends. Red-head was slender, tall, and entirely too put-together for 2AM the first night of reading period before finals really got underway. Red-head, Darcy decided sadly, was either definitely straight or even more certainly out of Darcy's league. Darcy looked down at her cleavage surrounded by a sweater with little snowmen on it, and her jeans that last saw soap the time she procrastinated an econ midterm paper with laundry and sighed heavily.

Red-head lifted her glass of possibly-water-possibly-vodka and gestured to Jane and Stark, who had started waltzing off-time to Styx's "Sail Away." 

"He's relatively harmless, I promise. Just--friendly."

Darcy snorted and responded automatically, "What, did you get him neutered?"

She heard the sound of a glass thunking onto the wooden table and turned to face red-head as the epiphany hit her, and  _boy_  was she glad for weird migraine meds that meant she was sober tonight.

Red-head had a very arresting gaze, when focused on you. "You--you don't have a dog."

Darcy looked around her feet. "Nope. Not a dog person. And, uh, should I--I mean, are you--"

Red-head nodded slowly and started rolling up her sleeve. Darcy saw dark blue handwriting, the i's dotted with little stars, emerge from Red-head's crisp blue button-down. "Your soulmate? I believe so. And  _thanks_ , by the way, for the content of your words..."

"You're welco--oh. Oh you were joking." Darcy looked into Red-head's eyes and saw her quirked smile for a second flash across her face. "Ha. Ha ha. I thought you'd have a pet, of some kind, too, you know. I don't even  _like_  pets!"

"How about a roomba?"

"A what?"

"A robot vacuum cleaner, only Tony makes them--nevermind. I'm Pepper," Red-head said. Darcy shelved her internal thoughts on  _pet vacuum cleaners_  and  _Tony Fucking Stark_ because "OhMyGod you're Pepper  _Potts?!_ " Her voice rose at the end of the sentence, and Pepper's eyebrow rose accordingly.

"...Yes?"

"Only, it's just that you are like, a  _legend_  in the Econ department, when you caught that squiggly data-set about the housing bubble numbers in  _2009_  when there was barely any usable  _data_ , and--wow. What did  _I_  do right, honestly? For you. For this? For me?" Darcy looked back down at her cleavage. Oh, yeah. "Last question, well, not really last because I hope it's first of  _many_  but yeah uh. Oh shit. Right. First things first: I'm Darcy!"

"Hi, Darcy. I am very very glad to meet you. What was your question?" Pepper leaned across the table, because the music was building to the end crescendo.

"Uh, I mean, it's okay if you're  _not_ , because yay, friends! Friends are great. Best friends are amazing and I could use a best friend who wasn't buried in an accelerator all day and--"

Pepper reached her hand out, and it was cool and light against Darcy's warm, stubby fingers. "Darcy, your question. I think I know what it is, but--"

"and CAAAAAAARRRRYYYYYYYYYY ONNNNNNN" They paused, dragged their gazes away from each other as Jane and Stark hit the final note. Or somewhere in the region of the final note. They had propped themselves on the microphone--thankfully turned off--on the tiny stage where until midnight there had been a truly  _vicious_ game of karaoke going on, and were leaning into each other and into the feelings of the song. Stark had, Darcy squinted, an entire bottle of top-shelf whiskey in one hand, and his other arm around Jane, but appropriately so, just at her waist.

"Darcy?" Pepper asked, as the music reached its peak, and Darcy yelled.

"ARE YOU GAY?!" into the ringing silence. The song had ended. Awkward.

"GOD I HOPE SO," Stark yelled into the silent microphone. "OTHERWISE I GOT TURNED DOWN FOR NOTHING, TITS."

"SOULMATE, TONY. SOUL.MATE." Aha. She did lose the poker-face, Darcy noted as Pepper flapped her hands in Darcy's general direction.

"Hot damn, Potts. You go!" Tony put his fist up as if to bro-pound it out with Pepper from across the room, and Jane straightened up a bit as well.

"DARCY! YOU GOOD?" Jane yelled. The music was back on.

"SO GOOD, baby! SO GOOD." Jane gave her thumbs up.

"So to answer your question, Darcy, yes, I am. So, if you would like this, I mean, not exactly  _tonight_ , because I've hardly just met you--" It seemed Pepper also did flustered. It was cute.

Darcy leaned over and casually shifted her boob-shelf to the scarred wood of the table. Her cleavage looked  _fantastic_  like this and Pepper, apparently, did not have an older brother to teach her about peripherals. Soulmate. Still sober but that was okay. Jane had a friend in Stark, apparently. Her favorite song was on. Her soulmate was also a queer-mo of some variety. Tonight was  _great_.  "Oh, Red, I  _so_ _would_  like to. But first, we need to--SWEEET CAROLINE WHOA WHOA WHOA--exchange like, numbers and--NEVER FELT SO GOOOD DUN DUN DUN-DUN-DUN, DUH NUH NAH NUH NUH--I guess you need to know my last name, so, Lewis, and--SHUT UP STARK YOU CAN'T SING--"

Darcy fished her phone out of her bag, swiped her lock code, and opened up the dialer, handing it to Pepper. "Digits, yo."

"EIGHT SIX SEVEN FIVE THREE OH NIIIIIINNE" Tony bellowed over the sound of Neil Diamond. "EIGHT SIX SEVEN FIVE--Hey!" Jane had elbowed him so Darcy nodded at her in thanks.

" _There_ ," Pepper said, handing the phone back, but not letting go of Darcy's hand. "I know that finals are just around the corner, but if--"

"--You, mean, coffee date, and by coffee I mean the one near the library because  _quiet_ , would be SO GREAT," Darcy jerked her chin the direction of the stage "to continue this conversation."

Pepper opened her phone,  _tap tap tapping_  at it. "How about....Tuesday? 4:15?"

Darcy grinned. "Sure, I'll pencil you in. And you can explain about the roombas."

"Oh god. Yes, yes I can. Wonderful to meet you, Darcy Lewis."

"Better to meet you sober, Pepper Potts."

" _Amen,_ " they said in unison, and turned to watch Jane and Stark attempt to shimmy.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> darcy lewis/tony stark
> 
> "you keep parking in the perfect space outside my dorm you absolute asshole"

The first issue was that the license plate was a vanity plate, and not one of the ones where you could pay extra and have the money go to charity. Seriously? They could have just spent that money on  _actual_  charity and taken the random numbers/letters like everyone else.

The second issue was that it was going to snow tonight and there was a parking ban already in effect and the garage was on the other end of a campus covered with icy paths. Go to a good school in New England, they told her. Scholarships, they told her. No one mentioned to the girl from the Southwest that people just  _knew_  how to walk on ice, apparently. 

The third issue was that Darcy was possible wearing really dumb shoes for winter excursions. What, she wasn't allowed to have a good Saturday night? She was also possibly wearing a dumb  _outfit_  for winter excursions, but hey that dress was banging  _and_  30% off when she bought it  _and_  it already matched the aforementioned shoes.

There was no drinking issue, because Darcy liked to party, but she wasn't an asshole and was DD for the rest of her pack of friends. So she was a good person, but also stone cold (did we mention  _cold_ ) sober when driving.

The fourth issue was that this was the car that was  _always_  there whenever she really needed to park. She wasn't sure why  _her_  spot (okay, there weren't actual labels on the spots but  _still_ ) because it belonged no one in her dorm. At all. She'd checked. The only other building near this lot was the engineering lab, which was supposed to be closed after 11PM and who on earth worked in an engineering lab on a Saturday night?

Okay, she knew who, because that vanity plate? It was a name. "STARK2," because of course his was the  _backup_  car. Darcy had never actually  _met_  Tony Stark, because she was an older sophomore on a bootload of scholarships to study government and he was  _Tony Fucking Stark_ , boy-wonder of the engineering department. In fact, the insurance on that car had to be staggering, because he was, what,  _seventeen_? 

You know what? Seventeen year old assholes with no social life and Daddy's credit card can eat a parking fine. Darcy double-parked behind a little-dick-big-truck truck a few spaces away, stuck her face in front of her sedan's failing heat system for a last whuff of warmth, and braced herself for the cold. Grabbing her keychain and an old wire hanger from her last interview suit dry-cleaning, she strode confidently over to Stark's car but stopped when she realized that of course Stark didn't have a lock for his car: he had a keypad.

It was fucking  _freezing_  out, okay? But this was  _Darcy's_  spot, and Stark was presumably as much a dick as his car (red and  _gold_ , seriously) indicated, and, well, it had been awhile. Stepping all around the car and absently braiding her hair away from her glitter-covered face, she cased the joint, as it were. No proximity alarms, which was probably just because parking at a college campus was  _asking_  for your car to be touched for reasons as innocuous as a ill-thrown frisbee or as nefarious as Darcy's current mission.

Electric keypad probably meant the whole damn thing was electric and--yep. Tesla motors logo etched near where the gas door is on normal cars. Okay, well, different set of skills, then. Darcy delicately stepped over a dirt-encrusted snow bank and back around to the driver's side door. Wincing for her dress and trying to tuck her coat under her butt as much as she could, she lay down on the ground near the front tire and stuck a hand up into the wheel-well. Knut, knut, plastic, metal, metal, aha!  _Wires_. She took the mini-LED flashlight off her keychain and stuck it in her mouth to light the space where her hand had grasped the main wires between the engine and the interior dash. She opened up her swiss army knife and snipped the cable that connected the standard alarm.

What, you thought the government major couldn't be a total gear-head? An by gear-head, she meant "accidentally fell in with mechanics  _slash_  Mexican drug-runners at age 11 who taught her everything they knew because her drunk-ass parents weren't paying attention to her and then passed her up the chain to more interesting mod-shops for a few years after high school." Yeah, the scholarships helped, but her proclivity for heated debates weren't where her main money stream was coming from, that's for sure.

She twisted her hanger into a long wire with a hook at the end and started gently wiggling the driver's side window open a centimeter. A twist of the hanger and  _click_  excellent. She bent the hanger into a more compact shape and slid gratefully into Stark's car. Door still open, she reached into the same set of wires from before, only now accessed from beneath the steering wheel. She was contemplating which wires she'd need short to get the damn thing to start when the car gave an unexpected shudder and started by itself.

Um.

A computerized voice with a British accent came over the radio speakers. "Weight range in driver's seat out of acceptable parameters."

"Okay, I know I have a big ass, but--"

"Weight range in driver's seat out of acceptable parameters. Engaging anti-robbery protocols now." Darcy leaned back against the seat just in time as the seat shot all the way back and the seatbelt slithered out of its slot and around her to buckle a little more than snugly around her. A fat, metal wire emerged from the cigarette lighter and grabbed her by the wrist, not moving when she wiggled her arm.

"Well, fuck." Darcy said, and wriggled a bit in her seat. The seat belt tightened a hair in response, and she stopped moving.

"Anti-robbery protocols engaged. Perpetrator in custody. Alerting User: Stark, Tony now."

"Wait. Wait what?" Darcy flapped her free arm in front of the sensor where other people might put a GPS reader. "Car. Car what the fuck are you doing?"

"We are waiting for Mr. Stark, and then you are going to prison, Miss." The car said, this time in a more natural voice.

"Ahahaha  _no_. No I am not."

"I have already alerted Mr. Stark and he is on his way."

"So, like ten minutes, then?" Darcy looked around the car. Ten bucks said the glove compartment had weed.  _Twenty_  that he was getting it from that biochem major who was repaying the college for all the lab equipment he'd ruined in anger through using the same rebuilt labs to grow pot.

"I cannot approximate how long--"

"It's at least ten minutes to get out of the bowels of the engineering building, which is where I assume he is."

"I am not at liberty to inform you of Mr. Starks' current location."

"Yeah but he's in the engineering basement because those locks don't engage like the rest of the building does after 11." What? Darcy's best friend was an astrophysics major and that was a floor up from where the engineering bros hung out. 

"I am not at liberty to--"

Darcy rolled her eyes. "But I  _do_. So, he's going to be at least ten minutes, and meanwhile I can't  _move_  and the door is still open, and it is  _February_  and I'm cold."

"Perhaps you should have considered that before you attempted to steal Mr. Starks' car."

" _Borrow_."

"I cannot possibly ascertain your motives for disabling the alarm system and attempting to move this vehicle."

"He took my parking space."

The car-voice paused. "I have consulted the directory of parking facilities on this campus and this is a public lot."

"Okay not  _my_  my parking, but you know people--never mind."

"This is a public lot. Mr. Stark may park here as long as he displays the proper sticker in the rear driver's side window."

"Seriously you can't turn on some heat?" Darcy wriggled a bit, trying to inch her dress down her thighs to cut at least a  _little_  of the cold. The belts tightened and Darcy became, very very much not-intentionally, a little turned on. But mostly she was still cold.

"Heat, Car-voice, please?"

"It is not in my programming--"

"You seem pretty able to think on your wheels, Car-voice. Improvise or my legs are going to freeze off at the knee."

"I'm sorry, Miss. I can't do that." Car-voice said in a slightly flattened version of his usual tone.

Darcy stopped moving at all and squinted at the console on the dash. "Did you just quote  _HAL9000_ at--"

"Well, at least you're a  _hot_  car thief," said a voice to Darcy's left and, stunned, she turned to face, apparently, her soul-mate.

"Your smart-car watched  _2001: A Space Odyssey._ I'd look into that," she responded, still processing that Tony Fucking Stark was her soul-mate. It had been somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy, her soul-mate mark. She knew early on that she'd end up at least a little attractive which made middle school so much easier to stomach, but she'd had to go after the whole car-thief thing herself.

Said boy-wonder-genius-billionaire had staggered forward and placed a hand on the roof of the car. "You're my--"

"--gulity," Darcy said, gesturing with her hand at the rest of her, and her predicament, trapped in the car.

"Oh. Oh! Yeah. Uh--" Tony spoke at the dash console. "Jarvis, you can release Miss, um--?"

Darcy shook out her right hand as it was released and reached out to shake his hand. "Lewis. Darcy Lewis."

"You--probably know who I am," Tony responded, waving a hand at the car.

"Yeah. I do." Darcy responded, elated she'd found her soulmate, kinda peeved he was  _younger_  than her like  _illegal_  young, but still freezing.

"Oh. Uh--sorry?" Tony said, stepping back.

"Sorry?"

"For being, uh, me. I mean, I'm mostly  _not_  sorry for being me, but now you have to put up with me being me, and you're like,  _really_  hot. I mean, not that I was checking you--You're just kinda  _dressed_  in  _that dress_ , you know?" Tony babbled. Darcy wondered when he would finish a sentence and fondly remembered that she  _wasn't_  seventeen and awkward anymore.

"You're the asshole who keeps stealing my parking spot, is who you are," she said, mostly to get that out there, but also to reassure him, because he was probably really okay, if he was her soulmate. Darcy had good taste. Well, expensive taste, but sue her. You had to fantasize about  _something_  when you grew up in a trailer and luxury car magazines were her Vogues and Cosmos.

"I--it's a public lot," Tony responded, sounding caught off-guard.

"I  _live_  here." She gestured to the dorm in front of them. "You just  _work_  here, and you're not even supposed to  _be_  in the labs this late."

"You know it's called the Stark Engineering Complex, right?"

"And the Stark Super Computer, and the Stark Student Union."

"....Yes?"

"All of those places also have parking lots."

"But I don't  _go_  to the student union."

Darcy looked him up and down and realized he, too, was really badly dressed for the weather. "Well, we're going together there  _now_ , because you look like you haven't been fed in awhile and you need a fucking coat."

"But, your car?"

Darcy stuck her very shapely leg out of Stark's creeper car and smirked to herself when she saw all of Tony's attention go from scanning the lot for her vehicle and concentrate on her leg, her ridiculous shoe, and wind his gaze up her thighs to the bottom of her very short dress. "Ah, yes, my  _car_. I am going to go change into something practical and bring you a coat or something. You, Stark, are going to move  _your_  car, then move  _my_  car into this spot," she passed him her keys and stood up only to look down at the top of his head. Maybe he'd have a growth spurt? Maybe she could stop wearing heels. Maybe she was concerned with a really dumb issue when her soul-mate was  _right there_. 

"And then we--" She reached a finger and lifted Tony's head out of staring right at her generous cleavage. "-- _We_  are going to drive over to the student union and I will buy you any panini you want and some coffee and you will not send me to prison. We will get to know more about each other. And then tomorrow I will repair your alarm system."

Tony's eyes searched her face and Darcy smiled.

"And tonight?"

"And tonight, Stark, you can sleep on my floor because there's a storm coming and you are seventeen. Don't get your hopes up."

He cocked his head, black curls tumbling around in the cold breeze. "Fair deal, Lewis. Meet back in twenty?"

"You betcha," she replied. "And Stark?"

He turned back from where he was starting to get into his car. "Yes, Lewis?"

She leaned down and looked at his lips, which he licked nervously. "Call me Darcy," she said, placing a chaste kiss on his lips before turning and sauntering away.

"--And me Tony! I mean, call me Tony!" Tony yelled after her when she was almost at the door of her dorm. She waved in reply and stepped inside.

 

***

 

Tony slid into his car and closed the door, breathing deeply and catching the scent of Darcy's perfume. "Status, Jarvis?" he said to his phone, his car. To Jarvis, in his multitudes.

"Congratulations, sir." Jarvis said.

"She's  _perfect_ ," Tony informed him. Hot, a brunette, she was  _jacking his car_ , and did he mention the rest of her figure? 

"She attempted to steal your car."

"But did you see those  _heels,_ Jarvis?" Tony was still unsure how girls walked in heels like that. Maybe Darcy would explain.

"Grand Theft Auto: Soul-Mate edition, Sir."

"What do we know about her?" Tony said, leaning into the buttery-soft leather of the seat.

"Darcy Lewis is the psuedonym of a sophomore government major here on scholarship. Darla Leeson is wanted in three states for illegal modification of passenger vehicles, theft of a telescope, and four states for car robbery."

Tony wriggled into the seat and stared at the dorm in front of him. "Jarvis, old buddy old pal?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Jarvis I think I'm in love."

"Yes, sir."

Tony paused and closed his eyes. Seriously, that  _dress_. Sleeping on her  _floor_  tonight, but Tony could play the long game. His  _soulmate_. Also, really nerdy, now that he thought about it.

"You pulled HAL9000 on her?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, I can't tell you that."

"Love ya, Jarvis."

"I have great affection for you, too, sir."


End file.
